Qualcomm

I honestly didn't expect to come to Mobile World Congress and have the moistness of my fingers judged, but it turns out I'm surprisingly dry. Qualcomm brought its new Snapdragon Sense ID 3D Fingerprint Technology to the show, eschewing the capacitive sensors found in the iPhone 6's Touch ID among other home buttons, and instead using ultrasonic scanning. The upside is being able to scan through materials, like glass or metal, and though the days of your entire touchscreen also serving as a biometric log-in panel aren't quite yet upon us, they're not far off. That is, assuming you're damp enough.

Our mobile gadgets may be fast, but that doesn't mean they're necessarily smart, something Qualcomm is aiming to change with its Zeroth contextual platform. Aiming to bring skills like visual perception, behavioral analysis, and audio recognition to future phones and tablets, Zeroth also has applications in tomorrow's cars, Qualcomm suggests. Initially, though, the demonstrations are a little more humble, like camera apps that can be trained to recognize people and objects.

The first phones running Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810, like the HTC One M9 announced yesterday, may only just be arriving, but the chip firm couldn't help but tease its next-gen silicon. The Snapdragon 820 isn't expected to begin sampling until the second half of 2015, but Qualcomm decided that there was no better place than Mobile World Congress to slip out a few early details about what might be powering your smartphone upgrade in 2016.

Unlocking a phone with a fingertip on your phone's home button is certainly convenient, but Qualcomm's latest biometric sensor see your fingerprint through your display. The company has announced Snapdragon Sense ID 3D Fingerprint Technology at MWC 2015, a long name for what's shaping up to be a potentially big improvement in security ergonomics. Rather than a capacitive sensor, as used in Apple's Touch ID and on the new Samsung Galaxy S6, Qualcomm's approach uses ultrasonics so that it can sense through a variety of materials.

Our Internet connections are getting crowded. With more and more people using the Internet, some on more than just one or two devices, networks are getting overloaded and over burdened. That problem is a bigger one for mobile carriers because their bandwidths are limited to a certain spectrum that they pay for. Qualcomm is trying to alleviate that problem just a bit by introducing a new chipset that will allow users and carriers to ride on what is known as the unlicensed spectrum of the Internet.

Qualcomm's latest flagship chip, the Snapdragon 810, is already under a lot of pressure for certain issues, warranted or not. It could probably do with less problems but it seems that rival MediaTek won't let it catch a break. The latter's upcoming chip, a certain MT6795, is now said to be on par with the Snapdragon 810. That is, at least based on leaked benchmark scores. Whether that will be enough to catapult MediaTek to the forefront of the mobile chips race is another question entirely.

It’s been quite the day for HTC. Not directly, but their incoming One M9 got a heavy grinding courtesy of the leak/rumor mill. A few videos, which have seen their source delete his or her online profile altogether, gave us a ton of info about the device and its set of features. Now, we get something a little more official regarding the HTC One M9 — this time courtesy of Qualcomm. Via Twitter and Vine, Qualcomm is hinting the new HTC flagship will have a Snapdragon 810 SoC.

This week the folks at Qualcomm have introduced a number of new processors for high volume tiers of smartphones. They've started off with two families: Snapdragon 600 and Snapdragon 400. From there, you'll find units like the Snapdragon 620 and the Snapdragon 618 coming out, ready to "redefine the 600 tier with significantly higher levels of performance with integrated 64-bit ARM Cortex A-72 CPUs and new X8 LTE modems." There's also a new octa-core CPU for the 400 tier - so its looking like even the "lowest end" of the smartphone universe is coming up powerful!

There is very little doubt that 2015 will see the shift to 64-bit architecture on mobile processors, especially with Qualcomm making available such chips that straddle all device tiers. Major mobile chip makers are already making the transition, but there seems to be one very small and new player who wants to catch up. LG is now reported to still be eying a spot in the mobile AP (application processor) market with its own 64-bit octa-core chip to rival Qualcomm and, of course, Samsung.

The competition for a place in one of your TV's HDMI ports looks set to get fiercer, with Qualcomm showing off its take on the streaming adapter, a Snapdragon-based mini Android computer smaller than a box of matches. Dubbed the Qualcomm 4K Streaming Adapter, the bright red box - currently a working reference design - squeezes what's effectively a full Android smartphone, albeit without the touchscreen and battery, into a plug-and-play dongle for your home entertainment needs. While we've seen streaming sticks before, what we haven't seen is such a comprehensive range of wireless options: everything from the latest WiFi, though to LTE Broadcast support, and more.